In many cases, the end of the year gives you time to step back and take stock of the last 12 months. This is when many of us take a hard look at what worked and what did not, complete performance reviews, and formulate plans for the coming year. For me, it is all of those things plus a time when I u...

MorphoSys AG (FSE: MOR; Prime Standard Segment, TecDAX) today
announced a
collaboration with privately held Lanthio Pharma, a Dutch
biopharmaceutical
company focused on discovering and developing lantipeptides.
Lantipeptides
comprise a novel class of therapeutics with high target selectivity and
improved
drug-like properties. Lanthio Pharma's technology LanthioPep can be
used to
identify peptides which are selective for a specific disease target
and to
stabilize them in their optimal structural conformation for receptor
binding.
MorphoSys and Lanthio Pharma will jointly apply their respective
technologies to
establish high quality and diverse lantipeptide-based libraries.
MorphoSys
receives preferred rights to exclusively license the LanthioPep
technology for
drug discovery.

MorphoSys will also make an equity investment in Lanthio Pharma as part
of the
company's Series A financing round. After closure of the transaction,
MorphoSys
will have a minority stake in Lanthio Pharma.

"Therapeutic peptides and especially so called stapled or constrained
peptides
comprise an emerging compound class which offers the potential to
address
multiple target classes and disease categories currently beyond
reach for
therapeutic proteins or small molecules. The combination of Lanthio
Pharma's
platform and our expertise in intelligent library design offers
unique
opportunities for both companies and that's what got us excited,"
commented Dr.
Marlies Sproll, Chief Scientific Officer of MorphoSys AG.

"We are very pleased to have access to this novel technology
platform and
promising class of therapeutic peptides," commented Jens Holstein,
Chief
Financial Officer of MorphoSys. "This transaction represents a new
approach for
MorphoSys providing innovation capital to promising start-ups with
technologies
and product candidates being close to our core capabilities."

Lanthio Pharma applies its proprietary LanthioPep technology to discover
peptide
therapeutics with increased resistance to peptidase degradation, high
receptor
specificity and increased intrinsic activity. The high specificity can
open up
new therapeutic applications around novel targets including
intracellular
targets and GPCRs. Therapeutic plasma levels of lantipeptides can
potentially be
achieved via oral, pulmonary or subcutaneous delivery. The technology
includes a
proprietary bacterial display capability, which allows for the
construction of
focused or diversified libraries of lanthionine-peptides. These libraries
allow
for immediate functional screening and easy production of peptides of
interest
for further in vivo and in vitro testing. Lanthio Pharma signed a
partnering
deal for its lead compound PanCyte, a lanthionine-stabilized
Angiotensin-(1-7) agonistic peptide for the treatment of pulmonary
indications, with
US-based Tarix Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in 2012. The start of clinical
development of
PanCyte is expected in 2013.

"Peptides are an attractive class of drugs, because they are used by the
body
itself to regulate physiological processes. A drawback of using
peptides
therapeutically can be their ability to interact with several
receptors and
their rapid degradation by peptidases in the body. Lanthio Pharma's
technology
can make peptides more receptor specific and the introduction of
lanthionines
also provides strong protection against peptidase degradation. As
such, our
lantipeptides typically have better "drug-like" properties, compared to
natural
linear peptides. In combination with MorphoSys's outstanding
capabilities in
generating high-quality protein libraries we are confident that we can
bring
lantipeptides to the next level," commented Bart Wuurman, CEO of Lanthio
Pharma.

About Lanthio Pharma:

Lanthio Pharma is a privately held drug discovery company that applies its
proprietary Lactococcus lactis based lanthionine-peptide drug discovery
(LanthioPep) technology to discover peptide therapeutics with increased
resistance to peptidase degradation, high receptor specificity and
increased
intrinsic activity.
Lanthio Pharma has generated stable, peptidase-resistant lanthionine
peptides
with highly specific agonistic activity for a number of GPCR targets, which
is a
focus area of the company. Many peptide ligands are thought to bind to
their
GPCR receptors via a "turn motif", which can be stabilized in Lanthio
Pharma's
peptides with a strong thioether bond. Fixing the turn motif in its optimal
receptor binding conformation can result in potent and specific agonistic
receptor activation.
The technology also includes a proprietary bacterial display library
capability,
which allows for the construction of focused or randomized libraries. These
libraries allow for immediate functional screening and easy production of
peptides of interest for further in-vivo and in-vitro testing.
Therapeutic products in Lanthio Pharma's pipeline include a
lanthionine-stabilized specific agonist of the AT2 receptor, which has
great potential in
diseases where tissue protection is important, like fibrosis.

About MorphoSys:

MorphoSys developed HuCAL, the most successful antibody library technology
in
the pharmaceutical industry. By successfully applying this and other
patented
technologies, MorphoSys has become a leader in the field of therapeutic
antibodies, one of the fastest-growing drug classes in human healthcare.
The
company's AbD Serotec unit uses HuCAL and other antibody technologies to
generate superior monoclonal antibodies for research and diagnostic
applications.
Together with its pharmaceutical partners, MorphoSys has built a
therapeutic
pipeline of more than 70 human antibody drug candidates for the treatment
of
cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer's disease, to name just a few.
With
its ongoing commitment to new antibody technology and drug development,
MorphoSys is focused on making the healthcare products of tomorrow.
MorphoSys is
listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol MOR. For regular
updates
about MorphoSys, visit http://www.morphosys.com

Slonomics® is a registered trademark of Sloning BioTechnology
GmbH, a
subsidiary of MorphoSys AG.

This communication contains certain forward-looking statements
concerning the
MorphoSys group of companies. The forward-looking statements contained
herein
represent the judgment of MorphoSys as of the date of this release and
involve
risks and uncertainties. Should actual conditions differ from the
Company's
assumptions, actual results and actions may differ from those
anticipated.
MorphoSys does not intend to update any of these forward-looking
statements as
far as the wording of the relevant press release is concerned.

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